Wish You Were Here (2007) — by Colin Asquith, Terry Nauheim, and Jennifer Schmidt — is a collaborative sound installation that will be on exhibit at SIGGRAPH from August 5-9, at the San Diego Convention Center, San Diego, CA .

A site for interactivity and reception, Wish You Were Here is a collective soundscape of audio greeting cards meant to be experienced within the hands of participants through physical and aural sampling. Our sounds are of field recordings, fragmented and manipulated to reinterpret the conventional notion of a sentiment in the model of a greeting card. Re-contextualizing recorded material within this format places limits—including time, compression, and availability—while initiating an accessible, portable, and participatory narrative.

Systems of exchange become evident through the selective re-authoring and re-playing of these sounds, quoting a theoretical giver and receiver. Through the opening and closing of cards on display, the gesture of a greeting becomes amplified, defining a space that is, at once, personal and public, intuitive and mechanical.